Joshua 13 & 14

Over the past few weeks, we have been talking about the ways that God has kept his promises and how we can trust him to do so in the future. Here we see a continuation of that theme, and we see how we might have to wait a significant amount of time for God’s fulfilled word. Also, we see that God does not always bless people in the order of their obedience.

If you were to go back to when the people of Israel were in the wilderness (Numbers Ch 13-14) Moses sent out twelve spies to spy out the land. Ten of the spies came back and told Moses that they were fearful of the people in the land and did not believe that they could take the land, but there were two spies that believed that they could. The two spies that believed were Caleb and Joshua, who trusted in God’s promise, and are now conversing in chapter 14.

Caleb fully believed God and was going to see things through and be true to his word and despite this he ended up being one of the last people to receive the blessing of land. This is something that we might feel uncomfortable with because we normally believe that the people who are the most faithful should be the first to receive blessings. As unfair as we might believe this to be it is something comforting to us. The good things that happen to us are not indicators of our faithfulness to God, because if they were then God hated the Apostle Paul (2 Cor 11:21-29). Therefore, we should look to God’s word as the standard of our obedience to God.

This week the main goal will be to encourage the students to continue devoting their lives to God despite seeing others receiving good that they might feel they deserve. God will honor their faithfulness in his way at his timing.